Cate Edwards, Daughter of John and Elizabeth, to Wed

Oct. 21, 2011— -- intro: Cate Edwards, the eldest daughter of John and Elizabeth Edwards, will say "I do" Saturday, bringing a day of joy to a family that has endured so much loss and upheaval in the last year.

Edwards, 29, is marrying her college boyfriend, Dr. Trevor Upham, 30. Her father, the disgraced former senator from North Carolina and two-time presidential candidate, will escort her down the aisle at the Methodist Church in Chapel Hill, N.C., The New York Times reported.

Afterward, friends and family will join the new couple at the Edwards' sprawling country estate outside Chapel Hill.

The day will surely be bittersweet, without Cate's mother, Elizabeth, there to see it. She died of metastatic breast cancer less than two weeks after Cate and Upham, a surgical fellow at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C., became engaged.

In the time they had left, mother and daughter plunged into wedding plans.

CLICK HERE TO SEE A SLIDESHOW ON LIFE OF ELIZABETH EDWARDS

"I feel so lucky to have shared that joy with her, to have had the time to leaf through bridal magazines together and talk about the wedding," Cate Edwards wrote in an article for Glamour magazine. "Even though I've had to plan the wedding without her, I feel blessed because, in her last weeks, she told me she was comforted to know I'd set forth on my own life path, with someone she loved and respected, and with whom she truly believed I would be happy."

Edwards said her mother "advised me to think carefully about the ceremony: It could be an important map, she said, for our life together."

About 150 invitations were sent out for the long wedding weekend, which will begin with welcoming cocktails on Thursday, the Times reported.

Upham's father, Chris, will serve as his best man. Edwards' sister, Emma Claire, 13, will be her maid of honor, while her 11-year-old brother, Jack, will be a groomsman. Edwards will have 14 bridesmaids.

The reception, Edwards wrote, will be outdoors at the 100-acre family estate and have a "rustic romantic" theme that she planned with her mother.

According to the Times, guests will start with a two-hour outdoor cocktail reception with stations serving shrimp and grits and Carolina crab cakes, before sitting down for dinner. The groom's parents, foodies from California, had a strong say in the menu, the newspaper said.

Guests will move to a Chapel Hill hotel for the after-party, which is expected to go until 2 a.m.

In lieu of traditional wedding gifts, Edwards, who left a firm in Washington, where she was practicing law, to start the Elizabeth Edwards Foundation, has suggested donations to the foundation instead. The foundation provides mentors to disadvantaged college-bound students.

Click through to see who will and who, most likely, won't be at the wedding.

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Edwards and Upham met as students at Princeton University.

Two years later they broke up, before reuniting for good in 2006.

"We wanted to see what else was out there, and nothing else was — nothing else as good as what we have," Edwards told Harper's Bazaar in 2007. "It's really nice to have someone who was there before all this began. You can really trust they're there for the right reasons."